Feasting On A Half-truth

The head of the Office of Government Ethics keeps offering a half-truth: that federal conflict-of-interest rules on lobbying are tough enough, and need only to be enforced better.

The whole truth is that, on top of lax enforcement, the rules aren't nearly strong enough.

In fact, the Government Accounting Office reported last week that it had identified 76 former high officials who worked for foreign interests between 1980 and 1985.

Furthermore, it cautioned Congress that the actual number probably was far larger: The GAO couldn't be more definite because government departments and agencies do a poor, low-priority job of keeping track of what top-siders do after leaving the public payroll. Until former White House aide Michael Deaver caught flak as an instantly successful access-peddler, Uncle Sam was ho-humming this area of potential abuse.

What is this potential abuse? For one thing, the lobbying leaves open the possibility that U.S. government officials are trying to please their potential foreign clients before their stint in government is up. Furthermore, once on the payroll of a foreign government, what are former U.S. officials doing with the especially potent information they learned in their government jobs?

The GAO's report includes stars whose lobbying should make taxpayers uncomfortable at best. For example, Edmund Muskie, who served as a senator and as secretary of state, later lobbied for Japan. At least 14 other former members of the Senate and House also worked for foreign interests between 1980 and 1985.

The national interest is insufficiently protected by the current barrier, which keeps a former high official from lobbying his former agency for one year.

Last month the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that includes a three-year ban against working for any foreign interest, and a bill introduced in the House would make it four years. Either would be an improvement, but a lifetime ban would be better still.

Opponents of this change claim that it would infringe on people's right to make a living and would deter people from serving in government. Nonsense.

These federal retirees made ends meet before they came to Washington, and in very few cases did their pay come from huddling with high muckamucks from South Korea or Saudi Arabia.

If Congress lacks the gumption for a permanent ban, the national interest demands at least a multiyear cooling-off period before these folks hire themselves out to foreign interests.